City Probes if Collapsed Porch Overloaded

MAURA KELLY

Published 8:00 pm, Monday, June 30, 2003

Associated Press Writer

City officials investigating a weekend porch collapse that killed 13 people determined that the owner did not have proper construction permits to build the structure, and were looking into whether it was overloaded.

The incident has prompted questions about the safety of porches and whether weight limits should be posted.

The collapse happened about 12:30 a.m. Sunday as about 50 people _ most in their early 20s _ were crammed onto an apartment's third-floor porch for a party. The floor suddenly dropped, sending people and debris crashing to the ground.

Seven men and five women, many on the porches directly below, were killed. A 13th victim, 25-year-old Kelly Pagel of Minnetonka, Minn., died Monday. At least 57 people were injured.

Chicago Building Commissioner Norma Reyes said Monday that permits had been issued for conversion work at the apartment. However, officials later determined the porch and the conversion were not authorized.

The apartment in question is in a three-story building in the city's affluent Lincoln Park neighborhood. The building was converted from five apartment units to three, and city officials said the third-floor wooden porch was apparently rebuilt at the same time.

No criminal charges will be filed because the collapse was a civil matter, police spokesman Carlos Herrera said.

Officials issued a permit in 1998 to LG Properties, the management company for the apartment building, only to install four furnaces, air conditioners and water heaters, said buildings department spokeswoman Maria Toscano.

Toscano said the city was looking for any similar violations at 27 other properties in Chicago managed by LG Properties.

Building owner Philip Pappas, who Reyes said was in Canada, did not return phone calls for comment from The Associated Press. LG Properties referred calls to Mike Aufrecht, whom they identified as a partner. He did not return calls from The Associated Press.

Pappas has been named as a defendant in at least three Housing Court cases for three different addresses other than where the porch collapsed, said Jenny Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city's Law Department. All the cases included problems with porches on the buildings, which were quickly fixed, Hoyle said.

One of those cases cited Pappas and others for "failure to rebuild or replace dilapidated and dangerous porch," court records show.

A structural engineer conducted a preliminary examination and determined that the porch was sound before the collapse, Reyes said Sunday.

On Monday morning, 12 small, white wooden crosses were placed on the ground behind the apartment building, each bearing the name of one of the dead. Several bouquets of pink roses and white and lavender daisies were on the sidewalk in front of the building.

Northwest of Chicago, eight people were taken to the hospital after a deck on a second-floor apartment in Rockford collapsed Sunday night. Eleven people were on the deck when it gave way.